With more than one million page views and more than 4,000 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Directors of the California stem cell agency will meet next week to begin the first stage of giving away $243 million in their pursuit to push a stem cell therapy into the clinic.

The immediate effort involves $3.3 million in planning grants for the second round of the CIRM disease team program. Applications are targeting cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's and muscular dystrophy, among others. The next step in the disease team effort will be much larger – $240 million, to be awarded next summer with roughly $20 million for each grant.

For the smaller planning grants to be awarded next week, 36 researchers applied for cash of up to $100,000. Nineteen were approved for funding by the grants review group, which is tantamount to full CIRM board approval. Their scores ranged from 87 to 62. One application was approved for funding but no score was listed. However, that application was ranked below the application with a score of 62. CIRM provided no explanation for failing to publish the score. Names of applicants were not disclosed in keeping with the agency's longstanding practice.

The disease team round was open to both business and academic researchers. We have queried CIRM about whether any businesses applied. The stem cell industry has been less than happy with its meager share of CIRM grants. The $3 billion agency's new chair, Jonathan Thomas, has indicated he wants to make CIRM more industry friendly.

The board meeting next week will be Thomas' first full session as chairman. The meeting was originally scheduled for two days, which was not uncommon under the tenure of former Chairman Robert Klein. But next week's session has been reduced to one day under Thomas. The agenda also seems not as fully packed as under Klein, although it has two executive sessions that could consume a fair amount of time. One deals with the evaluation of CIRM President Alan Trounson. The other deals with proprietary matters on grant applications.

Heavy agendas during the Klein era often generated quorum problems because of the supermajority requirements for voting by the board. It took so long to work through the material that competing priorities among board members meant that some – sometimes quite a few – had to leave.

Today – with eight business days before the Aug. 25 meeting – the agenda has a fair amount of background material posted, giving interested parties a chance to examine the information in a timely fashion.

The CIRM board also has plans to take up a report from its newIntellectual Property Subcommittee. The full board agenda contained no indication of what the report would deal with, but presumably it will involve a new, $30 million program aimed at the stem cell industry. That program will be acted on by the IP subcommittee next Monday, preceding the full board meeting. The panel's recommendation would normally go to the full board meeting on Aug. 25.

Also missing from the agenda is any explanation of the purpose of the discussion of the translational grant portfolio or analysis of the portfolio. Additionally, still to come is the latest version of changes in the grant review process for CIRM's big-ticket grant efforts as well as a job description for CIRM's first-ever chief financial officer.

The job description effort has been underway for some months and is linked closely to issues involving CIRM's controversial dual executive arrangement between the chairman and president. The new CFO will be reporting to both the president and the chairman.

The disease team planning grant item also reflected a change in the way CIRM presents the public summary of reviewer comments on the applications. The new format is more concise. Gone is the narrative format that often contained a more fulsome discussion of the applications. Here is a link to one summary on a planning grant application and another link to an application in January.
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About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.